by A. J. Cronin
The prosecutor moistened his lips and leaned forward.
"I am empowered to state that, if you will cease publication of these articles — which in the circumstances will be no longer necessary — Sir Walter will consent to pardon the prisoner Mathry, and release him immediately from Stoneheath Prison."
The prosecutor's altruistic smile seemed fixed upon his face. Dunn and McEvoy had not even exchanged a glance.
"Well, gentlemen, do you accept?"
"No. We refuse."
Slowly, Sprott took out his handkerchief and wiped the palms of his hands. His smile was gone. He was finding it impossible to hold it.
"You refuse? You surprise me greatly. May I ask your reasons?"
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The editor never took his eyes off him.
"In the first place it would be a betrayal of the Chronicles integrity if we compromised at this point. And in the second, one does not pardon an innocent man."
Silence again. Sprott carefully restored his handkerchief to his breast pocket.
"You say 'at this point.' What, may I inquire, is your ultimate objective?"
McEvoy answered in a level voice:
"To obtain the unconditional release of the prisoner Mathry. To secure a full, open, and impartial inquiry into the circumstances of his conviction . . . and if there has been a miscarriage of justice ... to procure ample and satisfactory damages for the horrible injury done to an innocent man."
Elevating his eyebrows, the prosecutor smiled. At least he attempted to smile, in a careless fashion, but his facial muscles refused to carry out the task. They broke down, midway, and remained fixed, in a contorted grimace. Hurriedly, he raised his hand to the lower part of his face. He kept it there for a moment, immobile, like a man suffering a severe neuralgic spasm. Then, with a great effort he got to his feet. He said coldly:
"I can only hope, gentlemen, that you will not regret the line of conduct you have chosen to pursue. Needless to say, I shall oppose you to the limit of my powers. And I may remind you that it is a costly business to fight the Crown."
He was too experienced, too skilled in performing before the public eye, not to preserve his self-control. He inclined his head towards each, in turn, and calmly left the room. But there was a grey look about his face. And he walked like an infirm man.
At the end of that week McEvoy, looking ahead, opened the Mathry Legal Fighting Fund in the columns of the Chronicle. Contributions came in from all over the kingdom. Rubbing his hands, the editor remarked, with nervous intensity:
"It's a national issue. And it's coming to a head."
In a free country, where public opinion is neither regimented nor suppressed, there arises, in certain instances, when the feelings of the people are deeply stirred, a great roaring wind of protest. It may begin only as a faint whisper, an individual murmur.
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But it grows, travels, and expands with unbelievable rapidity and strength, until it reaches hurricane force. When such a tornado occurs, it is useless tor those in power to attempt to stand against it. They must bend or be broken. Then it is that government by the people, for the people, is given its true effect.
And thus it was, in the present instance, with the case of Rees Mathry. At the time of the trial, this case had achieved only regional significance and, soon forgotten, it had lapsed into obscurity for fifteen years. Now, in McEvoy's phrase, it was a national issue. One after another the newspapers of the great cities fell into line in demanding an impartial investigation of the facts. Millions of words passed through the sweating linotype machines in the cause of Mathry. Writers and politicians, preachers of every denomination, publicists, lecturers, college professors, trade-union leaders, eminent scientists, leading actors, prominent physicians, all joined their voices to the prevailing clamour. "Rees Mathry" societies were formed in various centres. Mathry buttons were manufactured and sold all over the country. School children, who had not been born when the prisoner was convicted, walked in procession with banners: Release Mathry. Flesh and blood, still less a tottering government, could not stand against this outcry.
One wet and dreary afternoon towards the end of the month, as McEvoy and Dunn sat in the office, restless and uncommunicative, worn ragged by the continuous tension of the preceding days, they heard suddenly, a burst of shouting in the corridor outside. A moment later, Smith, the secretary, came into the room followed by the other members of the editor's office staff.
Excitedly, he held out a teletype strip.
"It's just come through, sir."
From below, on the compositors' floor, and from the basement beneath, there ascended sounds of further demonstrations.
"Read it then for God's sake," McEvoy said.
In a high voice Smith read out:
AT FIVE O'CLOCK IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS THE SECRETARY FOR STATE ROSE TO ANNOUNCE THAT REES MATHRY WILL HE UNCONDITIONALLY RELEASED FROM STONEHEATH PRISON ON THE LAST DAY OF THIS MONTH AND THAT A PUBLIC INQUIRY
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WILL BE HELD AT THE WORTLEY HIGH COURT WITHIN FOUR WEEKS' TIME. THE ANNOUNCEMENT WAS GREETED WITH PROLONGED APPLAUSE.
As though to point these final words another explosive cheer sounded in the building. The editor gazed at the little group clustered in the doorway. In his own overwrought state he was surprised at the delight and excitement on the faces before him. He felt obliged to make some appropriate remark.
"You've all done a great job," he said, conventionally, trying to summon a show of satisfaction. "And now we have the good news I want to thank you for your support. There'll be a nice bonus for every member of the staff the day Mathry is free."
When he had dismissed them he turned to Dunn, who sat back, examining his nails. He felt flat and stale, caught in the backwash of reaction.
"Well, we've done it," he said. "And I'm damned tired. I'm going home."
He began slowly to pull on his jacket.
"I'd like a short editorial for tomorrow's edition. You know, cracking up the parliamentary institution, the power of vox popnli, and so on. Will you do it?"
"All right."
"Thanks. Then bring Eva round to supper. We'll have some-tiling to cheer us up." He picked up his overcoat, paused. "We've won, haven't we? We ought to be shaking hands and dancing the fandango. What the hell's wrong with us?"
"Reaction, I guess. We've been pretty hard at it. But Mathry's free . . . we've brought him back to life."
"I wonder ... I wonder how Lazarus felt when he came back from the tomb." With these cryptic words, McEvoy shook his head, then departed.
Dunn finished the editorial in fifteen minutes. He pressed the bell, gave the typescript to Smith, then went into his own room. He meant to call the hospital to give Paul the good news — this was a treat which he had looked forward to for a long time. But a thought restrained him. He smiled to himself with that
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strain of sentiment he could never stamp out, flung his hat on the back of his head, and left the office.
At No. 61 Ware Place he found Mrs. Hanley returned from her trip to London, busy ironing a pile of laundry by the kitchen fire.
"Mrs. Hanley," Dunn said. "Paul's father is going to be released. It's definite and official. I want Lena to go round right away to the hospital and give him the good news. I have a feeling she'll do the job much better than me. Hurry now, and call her downstairs."
Mrs. Hanley did not move. Her lips drew together as she looked at him.
"Lena's no longer here. When I got back last week I found her rooms empty. She left a note to say she'd gone for good."
CHAPTER XIII
THE morning of March 2nd dawned clear and soft, with a chirping of sparrows among the yellow crocuses which dotted the strip of lawn outside St. Elizabeth's Home. It was perfect spring weather — the sun held its first real warmth, sap was running in the elms which fringed the short entrance drive, and feathery sprays of a delicate green were breaking fro
m the topmost branches. The moist earth, murmuring with unseen rivulets, seemed bursting into life.
It was the day of Paul's discharge from the hospital.
Long before noon, the hour when Dunn had promised to call for him, he was ready, sitting in the St. Elizabeth's parlour, his round of goodbyes made — with an extra word of gratitude, a special pressure of the hand for the buxom, red-cheeked, and perpetually cheerful Sister Margaret who had been his nurse. He had been acutely ill, but the rib was healed, the lung expanded, his cough gone. Now, although his strength had not fully returned and he still showed the marks of debility, he was pronounced organically sound.
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Punctually, Dunn arrived in a taxi. Alter a longish scene in the parlour — it appeared that Dunn was highly esteemed by the good sisters, and he had to evade with all his skill the pressing hospitality of Reverend Mother, who proffered a select refreshment of sherry and biscuits — they at last got away. As they drove towards the city, with the balmy air streaming in through the open windows, Paul experienced all at once a burst of thrilling anticipation, born of what lay immediately before him. This, after all, was what he had worked, and suffered, for all these weary months.
"I've taken rooms for you at the Windsor." Dunn broke the silence. "It's not much of a hotel but it's quiet. Not a bad place to get your bearings."
With a grateful glance, Paul indicated his readiness to fall in with all the arrangements which Dunn might make for him.
"In fact," the other went on, "when your mother arrives tomorrow you might all stay there, till the inquiry is over. The Chronicle will take care of the expenses. No, don't thank me. It's our show. And by the same token, here's thirty pounds. You take charge of it. You'll have to buy your father some clothes and things. You can settle up if you want to when the indemnity is paid."
"What indemnity?"
Dunn gave him a sidelong look.
"It looks like your father will have a claim against the government. In the opinion of counsel, up to five thousand pounds."
Paul received this wholly unexpected news in silence. Although, in his present mood, the prospect of such compensation seemed to him relatively unimportant, it did enable him to accept, with less compunction, the bundle of pound notes extended to him by his companion. It would be good to use them as Dunn had indicated. And, reflecting on that impending pleasure, somehow he felt especially glad that he would have this whole day alone with his father before his mother arrived from Belfast next morning.
"You've seen him?" he asked, after a silence.
Dunn nodded. "He's at the hotel. Smith, one of our staff, is with him."
"You think of everything."
"I wish I did," Dunn answered shortly. His manner, while per-
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fectly considerate, held a certain brusqueness and, after a pause, he changed the subject.
"Have you seen Lena lately?"
"No." Paul's face altered. "Not since the night she got me into hospital."
"You don't know about Lena," Dunn said abruptly. "It's about time you did." And, looking straight ahead, in a few curt phrases, he communicated the facts to Paul, sparing nothing.
Dazed and shaken, Paul felt his throat constrict. How he had misjudged her! What a fool . . . what a blind, insufferable prig he had been! The recollection of her face, with its expression of sadness and sincerity, haunted him. When he could control his voice he said:
"I must see her."
"She's gone."
"Gone?"
"She gave up her job," Dunn seemed to derive an acrid satisfaction from his reply, "and disappeared."
"But why?"
"How should I know?"
"At least you know where she's gone?"
"We didn't . . . but we do now." Dunn stole a side glance at his companion. "She's working as a waitress in a cheap restaurant in Sheffield."
"You have her address?"
"If I have, it's not for publication." Dunn spoke with a reticence that closed the subject.
The taxi had detoured the business centre of Wortley, and having crossed the Nottingham Road Bridge was now threading the southern suburbs. Many of the streets which they traversed had been tramped by Paul during the period of his misery when life had held nothing but hopelessness. But presently they reached the Fairhall district and drew up at the Windsor, a rambling, roughcast building, with wooden balconies, several turrets and a red tiled roof. It was a hotel of the residential type, constructed a decade previously on a grandiose scale, which had never really paid its way and which had lapsed gradually into a semi-commercial establishment, respectable enough, but always half empty,
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a trifle fly-blown. As they went through the revolving door, ascended the green carpeted staircase and paused momentarily outside the entrance to a first-floor suite, Paul felt Dunn looking at him as though about to speak. But now he could not wait. Trembling with expectation, he pushed forward, through the doorway.
In the sitting room, at the window table, watched from a distant seat by McEvoy's secretary, an elderly man was eating a meal of ham and eggs. He was about sixty, of heavy and ungainly build, with a thick-set torso and muscular arms. His head, partly bald, covered behind the protruding ears by cropped dirty grey hair, was round as a cannon ball, cemented into the bowed and thickened shoulders. The skin of his neck was parchment yellow, baggy and thickened, seamed with scar-like wrinkles, pitted with tiny bluish stains. Dressed in a shiny brown suit bursting at the seams, old-fashioned in cut and grotesquely small for him, he looked like a broken-down navvy out for the day.
Then, as Paul stood arrested, with beating heart, this total stranger raised his cropped head and, wrinkling up his brows, still chewing with his strong discoloured teeth, stared back at him with stony, hostile eyes. For an agonizing moment Paul could not speak. A thousand times, and in a thousand different ways, he had foreseen the meeting, the quick recognition, the warm embrace, the pardonable tears — ah, how tenderly had he embellished the reunion with the beloved father of his childhood. Prepared though he had been for changes brought by the years, in all his imaginings he had pictured nothing remotely resembling this devastating transformation. With an effort he took control of himself, advanced, and held out his hand. The fingers that met his own, after a moment's hesitation, were broad and calloused, hard as horn, with split and yellowish nails.
"Well, sir," Dunn exclaimed, with a note of heartiness, forced, and so unnatural, so out of key with his recent mood of reticence, it grated on Paul's ears. "I hope they're looking after you all right."
The man at the table switched his eyes towards Dunn. He did not answer but went on chewing, as though bent, grimly, on extracting the full flavour from the food.
Dunn saved the situation by turning to Smith.
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"You've seen to everything, Jed?"
"Yes, I have, Mr. Dunn," Smith answered.
"You didn't let the reporters bother Mr. Mathry too much?"
"No, sir, I didn't ... I handed out our prepared statement."
"Good."
There was a pause. The secretary picked up his hat, which lay on the floor at his feet.
"Well!" Dunn exclaimed, shifting his feet. "You two haven't seen each other for some time. Smith and I don't want to intrude. We'll look in tomorrow. Call me if you want anything."
A wave of actual fright went over Paul. He would have given anything to detain the two others, but he could not. He saw that they were anxious to go.
When the door closed behind them he stood for a minute in complete silence, then he took a chair and sat down at the table. The stranger, this Rees Mathry who was his father, was still eating, bent close over his plate, aiding the food into his mouth with quick thrustings of his thumb, and from time to time sending out that mask-like glance, in a kind of blank inquiry. Paul could bear it no longer. In desperation, almost incoherently, in slow and jerky phrases he began.
His remarks, which sounded so inadequate in his ears, gradually tailed off into silence. He was both startled and relieved when the other spoke.
"Have you any brass?"
Although chilled, slightly, by the crudeness of the question, Paul responded willingly.
"Enough to go on with."
"I couldn't get a stiver out of that Dunn." Then, as though thinking aloud, "I'm going to get money. I'll make them pay for what they done to me."
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The voice itself was rough, and hoarse, like an instrument seldom used, but worse than that tonal coarseness was the frightful bitterness, the dark and brooding rancour which pervaded it. Paul felt a further sinking of his heart.
"Have you a cigarette?"
"I'm sorry." Paul shook his head. "I've been off smoking for a bit."
Mathry studied him, beneath those mask-like brows, as though to discover if he were speaking the truth. Then, reluctantly, he produced a packet of cigarettes which Paul recognised as the brand used by Dunn. Selecting one, he cowered suddenly, as though to escape observation, and lit it. With the cigarette concealed in the cup of his hand he smoked rapidly, secretly, absorbing the smoke into his system. As Paul watched the intent brooding face he saw for the first time, almost with horror, its stony quality. The mouth, especially, was hard as flint, and shut like a trap beneath the long, raw, badly shaven upper lip. Suddenly, and without warning, Mathry killed the glowing end of his cigarette and placed the stub in his waistcoat pocket.